After last year’s garden, and the complications that came with it. We evaluated several different options for planting. After a little consideration, we decided to stick with the same layout as last year. Partially because it fits the best spot in the yard for sun vs. shade and also we do not want to make our whole back yard into a vegetable garden. So we left the beds where they lay and made one change. We added some cardboard underneath the soil (sorry no picture here as the assistant completed the task before I got my camera out). We had read that placing cardboard under your soil will help prevent certain worms and nematodes from coming up through the ground and chomping on your plants.

After the cardboard went down, we added the soil back into the beds and mixed with some of our compost we had been working on all summer.

The compost was really not ready and we decided to add some cow manure and garden soil purchased at our local Home Depot.
Our beds were small enough that a single bag, mixed in with our existing soil from last years planting was more than enough.

As you can see from the photo above, the compost had many large particles still in it which we had to pull out by hand.

After a little more time with the rake, we are ready to start planting our seeds for our 2012-2013 Florida vegetable garden.